Omar Sabbagh   Amr was cogitating on Time – or to be more precise, timing. Like most gamblers he had a very large and capacious mind, and could think his way round to the latest cutting-edge research, say, on unicorns and UFOs. The way he figured it, standing there in the small, square, white-walled kitchen, […]

Suzanne Ghadimi   ‘Please,’ I said in desperation as I looked across the open bonnet of my car. It was 2.30am and we were in the garage. It was December and it was cold in Aberdeenshire. Colder than usual. ‘I just want to…’ ‘You have to stop!’ I begged. ‘…fix it,’ he said. He was […]

Rebecca Audrey Johnson   Angela stood at the window, watching her daughter watching the chickens. She carefully rubbed a china plate clean. The girl had always been more like her father, not like Angela at all. And it was possibly her own doing, because from the first moment she’d clutched that delicate and infinitely precious […]

Maggie Ling   It’s their highly responsive MHV! Aurelia said, adopting that high-flown tone of hers. They were discussing the intelligence of birds. Aurelia had edged the conversation in that direction, maybe as a way of proving, if proof was needed, how very clever she was. Her PhD had been on avian cognition: Thinking Psittacinae-fashion. […]

Niki Baker   I can see my own small pink fingers curling around the handle of my baby walker and feel its smooth, round coldness against my inquisitive skin. This is my earliest memory. And it is a true memory, not one of those false recollections stolen from a tatty-edged photograph or a fondly repeated […]

Suzanne Ghadimi is originally from Montreal, Canada, though she has lived for the past ten years in Scotland. Suzanne holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC, and an MLitt in Creative Writing with Distinctions from Aberdeen University. Her practices of visual and written arts often blend into each other […]

Rebecca Audrey Johnson has worked in the UK and abroad as a freelance translator, and has prior professional experience at various organisations linked to international affairs. She has a BA in French and Hispanic Studies (2002) and an MA in International Relations (2008) from the University of Birmingham. In 2013, she commenced her AHRC-funded doctoral […]

After a career as a published illustrator and cartoonist, Maggie Ling swapped dip pen for iMac to work with words alone. Since then, her prose fiction has been listed in numerous international short story competitions, including a shortlisting for the Bridport Prize and publication in Unthology 1 (Unthank Books 2010), Something Was There… : Asham […]

Tamsin Partington is a creative writing master’s student, child tamer, cat wrangler and wife. Her passion is the short story, but she also loves to write longer sci-fi and fantasy fiction for children and young adults. She started writing as soon as she could spell, and when her children started primary school she knew she […]

Jan Steer grew up and was educated in Devonshire, then served a full career in the Royal Navy before embarking on another in podiatric medicine. He read for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Wales (Trinity). He is an avid reader with an almost child-like fascination for the world around him that […]